This post offers some tips on how to find a writing gig. It is not for people who dream big and aims to be a world-famous writer. I am not qualified to give advice on that. People like J.K. Rowling and Stephen King do. For over decade, I have been earning side incomes as a writer and thoroughly enjoying the process. This has made my life more satisfying and its dark moments more bearable. If you want to do what I am doing, consider these tips:
1. Develop your own niche and pitch your ideas to mainstream newspapers. I have published numerous opinion pieces in major Canadian and Hong Kong newspapers (both English and Chinese) through this strategy alone. The great thing about these channels is that they no doubt have wide readerships. Your pieces may get criticized. Yet it is known to be competitive to publish in these places: you feel prestigious just to be able to associate with high-profile and accomplished people. The downside is that your pitches likely get rejected or ignored: that is why it is important to find a niche. Examples: are you a member of any minority group in the country? Do you have specialist knowledge on any current topics? As one can surmise, once a contributor’s work has appeared any pitch from the same person in the future would be more seriously considered.
Unfortunately, one Hong Kong newspaper in which my work appears rather regularly closed in 2021 amid the upheavals in the city. This incident made international headlines. I even published in a Canadian newspaper what is both a social commentary and an elegy about its story and its significance to me as a writer. This has become one of my most prided pieces of writing.
2. Find specialist channels and outlets that match your own specialty. I was very lucky to have found a New York-based non-profit called Heterodox Academy, which aims to promote diversity of thought and which pays its authors who publish related thought-pieces in their blog which is updated very frequently and regularly. It is far more satisfying than publishing in traditional and mainstream media which, quite unfortunately, are quite often ideologically driven and often dominated by editors and writers from a certain political spectrum.
How did I find this think tank? In late 2020, I was nominated for, and subsequently won, an award sponsored by it: the Open Inquiry “Exceptional Scholarship” Award for my law book with Cambridge University Press. I exchanged numerous emails with its people and received updates about its activities. I was even invited to write blogs and informed about its remuneration rate. While I was so grateful that the award opened doors for me, I need to draw your attention to the fact that you need not be an award winner or connected to it to contribute as a blog writer. Many academics and even graduate students have become regular contributors. If you aren’t an academic, seek opportunities at other think tanks and organizations.
3. Send a few of your written works to different outlets in which you hope they can appear. I did this during the break after completing the bar exam. I wrote a total of three essays and sent them off to two very reputable Chinese-language newspapers in Hong Kong. I hardly expected to hear back. A couple of days later, one editor asked me if I would be interested in writing a weekly column on New York and American life more generally because a columnist just left. I happened be in the right place at the right time.
I served as their new columnist for a total of 3 years and 8 months. I wrote my last column in late June 2015. Why? The column editor said they changed the cultural section, in which my column appeared, once every couple of years and inevitably had to cancel some columns. I suspected that this was not the real reason why I, along with a few others, lost the column. It was 2015. The political climate was fast changing and censorship became the norm. I recall that after mocking the behaviors of a certain groups of people in several consecutive weeks, a member of the group–who exhibited the same behaviors that I targeted–wrote a complaint letter to the editor, who forwarded it to me. I responded to the criticism, which was based on complete falsehoods and biased opinions, in my subsequent column. When I received another sarcastic response from the same person, I ignored it. That happened only two months before my column was closed.
Although I miss writing for that newspaper, I never regret exercising my right to free speech, before the paper died a horrible–yet foreseeable–death in the city. The frequency of cancelling (or should I coin a new word: “de-columning”) writers is far lower in western democracies, no matter how flawed such democracies may be. If you want to keep the column, you might still want to be cautious at the beginning. However, once you’ve gained some reputation, you should feel bolder to say what you want to say. This is how democracy works: not by toeing the “party line,” but by saying what you feel you should–and have a moral obligation to–say.
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There are no doubt people who have strong connections would not need to do any of the above to earn writing opportunities. Some people argue that being well-connected is itself an asset: bear in mind, though, that many of these connections are not well-earned and that there are con artists around. I bet you have come across so much low-quality stuff, especially on the Internet, that made you wonder how it got published in the first place. Putting in the effort, earning your own opportunities, and getting rewarded for good writing brings tremendous satisfaction–this is perhaps something that con artists won’t ever truly experience. 🙂